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The first MBP I ever owned, and I think it had a better quality screen than todays MBPs but maybe that is in my head.
 
Still miss the 17” MacBook Pro. 16” is close, but no cigar…. Even with an 8 core I9, 64gigs of ram, I still miss the 17” form factor. So much room for activities….
And also add the fact that it had the highest dpi screen of all non-Retina Macbook (Pro)s. It's pretty much acceptable even by today's standards - not THAT pixelizated, as opposed to the 13 / 15.

Pity Apple didn't release a 2012 version - now we have to either use a 2010 model (2-core only) or live with the "death trap" of the 3D accelerator of the 2011 models. (I myself have a late 2011 17" with a disabled AMD, which means no external monitor support. BTW, I also have the early 2009 (MacBookPro5,2) and the Mid/Late 2007 (MacBookPro3,1) 17"s, all in perfect condition. The latter has the 1680x1050 screen so it's unbearably pixelizated.)
 
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The first MBP I ever owned, and I think it had a better quality screen than todays MBPs but maybe that is in my head.
quite a leap forward to current 2021 16" MBP models from a 2012 Retina MBP.

2012 Retina 15" MBP
15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit display with IPS technology; 2880-by-1800 resolution at 220 pixels per inch
802.11n Wi-Fi
Battery Up to 7 hours wireless web

2021 16" Retina MBP
16.2-inch (diagonal) Liquid Retina XDR display;1 3456-by-2234 native resolution at 254 pixels per inch, HDR capable
802.11ax Wi-Fi 6
Battery Up to 14 hours wireless web

Biggest change was the 2012 MBP launching and playing some games, it got very hot to touch.
2021 MBP runs cold comparably. Loved the 2012 model, it's a classic, but now the time to switch if you like MBPs. :)
 
Hell of a machine and Apples peak - at this point we had an excellent keyboard, ports and the OS supported open standards like OpenGL. A few years after this great machine was presented, ports vanished, Butterfly keyboards were introduced, OpenGL was replaced with proprietary Metal instead of Vulkan.

I still have one and it still works like a charm.
 
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I’m still using mine, albeit not much as it really chugs these days. The trackpad is temperamental and I suspect it needs new thermal paste as than fan speeds up immediately.

I’ll be getting the new M2 MacBook Air, when it releases.
The M2 pro Has a larger thermal envelope with better sustained performance With its active cooling system. Plus you have better and faster access to your emojis(lol) with the Touch Bar. While factual, a bit of humor on that second point. But also with the Touch Bar you don’t need to shift any F keys at the top like you would with the regular keyboard on the air. You can immediately brighten your screen for example. I think I might go for the pro.
 
I'm thinking that it was the first without an easily swappable battery, which is why I chose the mid-2012 MacBook Pro without the Retina display.
 
It's still a great machine: great keyboard, trackpad, I/O, sound. And it's beautiful to look at. I had the screen replaced shortly after purchase as it had burn-in issues (for free) and two years ago I upgraded the SSD and battery. Still at the peak of its powers, I'd say. 😁
Did you do the battery yourself? How did it go?
 


Today marks the 10th anniversary of Apple announcing the first MacBook Pro model featuring a higher-resolution Retina display.

2012-retina-macbook-pro-apple-website.jpg

Introduced at WWDC 2012, the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro introduced a much thinner design compared to the previous model, as Apple removed the built-in Ethernet port, FireWire port, and CD/DVD drive. The notebook was still equipped with two Thunderbolt ports, two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, an SD card slot, MagSafe 2, and a headphone jack.

"The MacBook Pro with Retina display pushes the limits of performance and portability like no other notebook," said Apple CEO Tim Cook, in a press release announcing the new MacBook Pro. "With a gorgeous Retina display, all flash architecture and a radically thin and light design, the new MacBook Pro is the most advanced Mac we have ever built."


At the time it launched, Apple said the Retina MacBook Pro featured the world's highest resolution notebook display, with 220 pixels per inch. The notebook was powered by Intel's third-generation quad-core Core i7 processors, and equipped with NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M graphics, up to 16GB of RAM, and up to a 768GB SSD.

Pricing for the first Retina MacBook Pro started at $2,199 in the United States. In October 2012, Apple announced a 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Retina display, which started at a lower price of $1,699. Both notebooks are now on Apple's obsolete products list.

Article Link: 10 Years Ago Today: Apple Announces First MacBook Pro With a Retina Display
Yes. Reminds me of my top of the line MBPro with the AMD Gpu...Fail!
 
Apple services all devices for battery swaps regardless if they are Vintage or Obsolete. The limiting factor is battery availability locally which might mean a week or so wait.
I had apple tell me the couldn’t service this model as well. Source on this?
 
In my opinion, this was Apple's best product — the last one Steve Jobs saw to completion. I bought one the day it was released and never had an issue with it, other than the typical battery fade over the years. It's the only Apple product I would describe as a perfect 10/10. Sleek edges, impressively thin, beautiful display, no notch, and superbly reliable. Still the benchmark of design and performance ten years later.
 
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Naaa, that thick MBP with its non-retina screen was only good for people that liked all those ports. The Retina display was noticeable better.

If all you care about is thinness and the Retina display, then maybe. Ports was only one benefit. The ability to replace or upgrade your RAM AND boot drive and with industry-standard components (rather than proprietary drives only sold by OWC) was huge. Also, you could replace your battery without having to replace the entire top case. Not to mention, it was dirt simple to do any repair you wanted to on it.

AND, if we're talking Mid 2012/Early 2013 15" MacBook Pros, the Retina had issues with the NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M because the chassis was too damn thin for it; the non-retina had zero issues. So, yeah, if we're talking about Ivy Bridge MacBook Pros, non-retina wins unless, again, you only care about thinness and that display. Retina didn't come into its own until the Late 2013 models.
 
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Do you also remember the many, many times your “visionary” Mr Jobs was wrong? And do you remember how he was very clear that he was lucky to be active in a time when miniaturization in electronics advanced super fast for a couple of years?
Of course I remember how Jobs got it wrong in many instances… but at same time he and others within Apple at the time were looking towards and actually seeing the things of their future… The Newton wasn’t considered a “success” and I would venture to say, at the time they were selling it, they were losing money on it. If you can extrapolate the R&D costs and design efforts from back then and import some of it into the development of the iPhone/iOS then i would retrospectively be able to go back and reclassify the Newton as a success… another example of the Steve Job’s visionary and innovator (Not really a computer scientist by any stretch) was something he did outside of Apple… and if you listened to everyone during that time is was a horrible failure and money sink… and that was “NEXT” - yes, it was a failure until Apple bought it and then introduced MacOS X…. Is that still considered a failure? In my book, no, it’s not.

The bloated hardware mess Apple found themselves in back during some of the early years was not the doing of Steve Jobs, and i would say had a role in his departure from Apple… the sugar water sales guys running the joint got complacent and lost their desire and ability to innovate. But yes, all visionaries fail, and some are just ahead of time times and what they appear to have failed with/at just hasn’t had enough time to be absorbed and allowing time to catch up to it.

My most favorite of the Steve Job’s failures was more in the design areas of things… even if it was just him signing off on the design and it not really being his own, but that of someone like Johnathan Ive… but still, some of the most ridiculous design concepts came under his command/leadership of Apple, so he has to take some of the blame. Can anyone remember the “Luxo Lamp iMac”? How about the Cube? Any other good ones out there?
 
An epic machine, the first one that let me change over permanently to Mac for all things. Cross shopping the maxed out retina against the top spec Sony Vaio at the time, the mbp was almost $2000 cheaper (nz$6k vs nz$8k) and higher specs all round. Macs are cheap
 
My main computer until I received the Mac Studio.
16RAM, 500GB of SSD and didnt upgrade beyond Mojave did the trick.
My longest computer until then lasted 5 years max.

BUT

I got a lot of real big problems:
- I got 2 battery replacement (warranty covered)
- I got a replacement of the logic board because a faulty GPU (warranty covered)
- I have to fight to replace my screen as it had the awful and shameful ghosting problem (warranty covered but took a lot of effort)
- I suffer the Bluetooth/WIFI problem where they had interferences and for 2 years, until a major OSX release solved it, I couldnt have both connected (this was a large problem affecting almost every rMBP and a real pain as WIFI signal was quite low)

So it was a lot of time consuming problems and trips to Apple store
 
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I’m still using mine, albeit not much as it really chugs these days. The trackpad is temperamental and I suspect it needs new thermal paste as than fan speeds up immediately.

I’ll be getting the new M2 MacBook Air, when it releases.
New thermal paste and cleaning dust inside and mine got quite better (before, couldnt connectd 2 displays because thermal throttling)
 
Typing this on my 2012 rMBP and it's still a great machine... the screen is still beautiful, bright, white and sharp. I was lucky that mine didn't have the delaminating issue.

Quad core i7, 16GB RAM and an SSD means it's still more than capable of dealing with everyday tasks... it can play a 60fps 4K video on YouTube without issue and even plays back 4K H265 files but having no decode/encoders, the fans ramp up immediately!

MagSafe, built in SD Card reader, HDMI out, minidisplay port and USB3...! The only thing that lets it down is that, since installing opencore/Monterey, running it in 1920 "high" res makes it feel a little sluggish (graphically). But most of the time I'm at default unless there's some specific work that needs lots of space.

This model obviously peaked in 2015.

Here it is next to a 10 year younger Mac Studio Ultra and it still looks modern.
Never had any issue with the GPU?
 
I think that was more of a 2010/2011 issue afaik

My 2010 had this issue - it was bought for me by the IT department at the university I attended during post-grad, and so I never received the recall email about the graphics card. The computer started acting up just after the recall window and Apple then refused to fix it...
 
I’m still using mine, albeit not much as it really chugs these days. The trackpad is temperamental and I suspect it needs new thermal paste as than fan speeds up immediately.
Dust is another possible culprit. I still remember pulling open my old black polycarbonite MacBook and finding an ungodly amount of dust and cat dander in the thing. It ran signficantly cooler after I blew it all out.
 
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Purchased a maxed out MBP that year. It was a fantastic machine and is running Big Sur just fine. The first suitable upgrade was the 16" M1Max MBP. I purchased one of those but I did not think I would make good use of the 8TB SSD, so it is not maxed out :rolleyes:
 
Still use this exact model to edit 50+ 4K wedding films a year. Apple did good with this one.
 
I decided to go with the non-retina MacBook Pro because I wanted the matte screen. I'm typing this comment on a 10-year old computer.😊
 
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I decided to go with the non-retina MacBook Pro because I wanted the matte screen. I'm typing this comment on a 10-year old computer.😊
What browser and version are you using that is still supported and can display the content on the web these days? Last time I went that long thats the biggest issue i ran into… Apple not supporting the software updates to the last MacOS and other… it wasn’t long before I couldn’t use many programs, like Mail that had to interact with other servers because they had moved on and no longer supported the older software… but i do give you they can and do run for that long and even longer… i have an old PowerMac 8500 and an even older Quadra tower sitting in a closet somewhere that still boot and run on MacOS classic… and actually dual booted using MacOS X but still was frequently using software made for MacOS 9x until it was completely dead in the water. Fun Times those were.

1C6961B1-B0EC-4EA8-B6C2-4A3FA7C9650D.jpeg
 
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